Tribune correspondent set free

Tribune staff reporter

Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek was set free Saturday by Sudanese authorities who had charged him with espionage, ending more than a month in custody and starting him on a journey home to the United States.

At the end of a 13-minute proceeding in the El Fasher courthouse, Judge Hosham Mohammed Yousif spoke in English to Salopek as well as his driver, Idriss Abdulraham Anu, and interpreter, Suleiman Abakar Moussa, both residents of Chad: "We are stopping the case and we are releasing you right now. And that is all."

The announcement came a day after New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and secured a promise to release the three men.

"I'm doing great," Salopek said minutes after his release. "It's an interesting feeling being mobile again, in a mechanized vehicle."

Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and the Chadians had been scheduled to go on trial Sunday in El Fasher on charges of espionage, passing information illegally and printing false news, as well as entering the country without visas. Salopek was on a scheduled leave of absence from the Tribune and on a freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine when he was detained.

The three were to leave El Fasher later Saturday and fly to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, with Richardson and his traveling party, including Salopek's wife, Linda Lynch; Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski; National Geographic Editor in Chief Chris Johns; and U.S. charge d'affairs Cameron Hume, the top American diplomat in the country.

Lipinski and Johns expressed relief and elation. Johns said: "Everybody is absolutely delighted. I've worked for 20 years in Africa and never had a better day than this one."

Salopek is to return to New Mexico, his home state, as soon as Sunday. The Chadians were to return home to Chad.

"I'm elated," said Richardson, who got involved in Salopek's case at the request of Lynch and Lipinski. " I think this is a triumph of diplomacy. It shows we can make a difference even if we have wide differences, which (the United States and Sudan) do."

Richardson, a former congressman, energy secretary and United Nations ambassador, met al-Bashir 10 years ago when Richardson successfully negotiated the release of three Red Cross workers held by Marxist rebels in Sudan. Al-Bashir invited the Democratic governor to Khartoum after a meeting between Richardson and the Sudanese ambassador to the U.S. in Washington.

Though Salopek and Lynch are residents of Richardson's state, the governor had not met Salopek before his release. "He came up to me and said, 'Thank you," Richardson said.